Daniel Weissmann, Managing Director of the Liège Royal Philharmonic, is also a violist. Following an initial album released by Fuga Libera (2018) and chiefly devoted to German music, he continues his exploration of the chamber repertory for viola with this new album, here in partnership with the pianist Peter Petrov. The programme explores the French Romantic repertory, in a world premiere recording of the British musicologist Hugh Macdonald’s remarkable and formidably difficult arrangement for viola and piano of Berlioz’s Harold en Italie. The album is completed by ‘fin-de-siecle’ pieces by Vierne, Chausson and Tournemire (all three students of Cesar Franck), written between 1894 and 1897, which embrace the full expressive and melancholic potential of the instrument.
